Not an hour of the day but loitering
housewives and idle maid-servants may be seen, lingering with
pitcher on head, or in hand, to hear the last of the endless tattle of
these worthies.
Among the water-carriers who once resorted to this well, there was a
sturdy, strong-backed, bandy-legged little fellow, named Pedro Gil,
but called Peregil for shortness. Being a water-carrier, he was a
Gallego, or native of Galicia, of course. Nature seems to have
formed races of men, as she has of animals, for different kinds of
drudgery. In France the shoeblacks are all Savoyards, the porters of
hotels all Swiss, and in the days of hoops and hair-powder in England,
no man could give the regular swing to a sedan-chair but a
bog-trotting Irishman. So in Spain, the carriers of water and
bearers of burdens are all sturdy little natives of Galicia. No man
says, "Get me a porter," but, "Call a Gallego."
To return from this digression, Peregil the Gallego had begun
business with merely a great earthen jar which he carried upon his
shoulder; by degrees he rose in the world, and was enabled to purchase
an assistant of a correspondent class of animals, being a stout
shaggy-haired donkey. On each side of this his long-eared
aide-de-camp, in a kind of pannier, were slung his water-jars, covered
with fig-leaves to protect them from the sun. There was not a more
industrious water-carrier in all Granada, nor one more merry withal.
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